Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Catholic Mission director denies covering up child sexual abuse

A senior Catholic Church figure has disputed claims he covered up
child sexual abuse, saying none of the cases he dealt with required
reporting.

The national director of Catholic Mission, Father Brian Lucas, said
he had been “pilloried” in the media with headlines about a cover-up.

In all the abuse cases he dealt with, he said, either the alleged
perpetrator had died or was already known to police or the courts, or
the victim did not want the matter reported.

“When you look at the four categories of case that I dealt with,
broadly, none of them involved my personal reporting to the police,”
Lucas told the royal commission into institutional responses to child
sex abuse on Monday.

The commission is looking into the response of Catholic
dioceses in Parramatta and Armidale to abuse allegations against the
priest John Farrell.

The inquiry has heard that complaints about Farrell abusing altar
boys surfaced in 1984, but he remained in the public ministry until
1992.

Lucas was one of two priests responsible for speaking to sex abuse victims and accused clergy in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Monday’s hearing was told he took a complaint from a girl who alleged
Farrell touched her inappropriately on three occasions, including on
the breasts and the upper leg. Lucas said he had not referred the
complaint to police at her request.

“She was quite adamant she didn’t want any referral to the police,”
Lucas said. “I listened to what she said and I respected what she said.”

In May 1992 Lucas discussed with the then-Armidale bishop, Kevin
Manning, confronting Farrell and offering him either counselling or an
application for dispensation.

Lucas insisted that if he had known at the time the risk Farrell posed to children, counselling would not have been an option.

“If I knew then what I know now, of course, that’s very different,”
he said. “I didn’t have any idea in 1992 of the extent of this man’s
problem.”